Garth Turner, former Member of Parliament and current entertaining, curmudgeonly, and well-informed Greater Fool blogger about Canadian real estate -- and the world economy generally -- gives
his predictions for 2012. The main one, IMO, is the one that he talks about relentlessly in his postings: "Most people won't get it."
posted by anothermug
on Jan 1, 2012 -
30 comments
A lawfirm perusing the New York Times archives has examined how physician W. J. Mayo, famed industrialist Henry Ford, anatomist and anthropologist Arthur Keith, physicist and Nobel laureate Arthur Compton, chemist Willis R. Whitney, physicist and Nobel laureate Robert Millikan, physicist and chemist Michael Pupin, and sociologist William F. Ogburn foresaw
the year 2011 from the year 1931, with commentary.
[more inside]
posted by 1f2frfbf
on Dec 15, 2010 -
13 comments
12 Events that Will Change Everything is an interactive article from Scientific American that offers rich information on potential major discoveries or cataclysms that could change the world, as well as their chances of happening. The list is a surprisingly sane look at future discontinuities as these sorts of lists go: it includes human cloning, artificial life, asteroid collisions, ice caps melting, and room temperature superconductors. For less sanity, see fifty or so ways the world could end at
Exit Mundi.
posted by blahblahblah
on Aug 13, 2010 -
50 comments
In 20 Years ... Upload a photo of yourself and the site produces a predictive illustration of what you'll look like in 20 or 30 years. And as an added bonus, you can toggle whether you're a drug addict or not.
[more inside]
posted by crunchland
on Jun 21, 2010 -
115 comments
Prophetic Pictures from Menominie, Wisconsin. In 1905, high school senior Albert Hansen took photogaphs of his graduating classmates at Menominie HS. Not as they were -- but as they believed, or hoped, or feared they would be in the decades to come.
Dorothy M. Jesse was going to be a mathematician, and
Fred Quilling a pharmacist.
Alice M. Tilleson would be a prominent socialite, whose "eccentric ideas with reference to danger, force her to cling to that old fashioned vehicle, the automobile, instead of the new wheel-less aerial motor car." William C. Klatt, a future physician,
would operate on disembodied heads. And Hansen himself
was destined for the hobo's life. The Wisconsin Historical Society has
the whole collection available online, together with the text from the yearbook and the truth, as best the Society could learn, of how the graduates' actual future compared with prophecy. (Spoiler: Fred Quilling really did become a pharmacist.) Just one of the many remarkable collections at
Wisconsin Historical Images.
posted by escabeche
on Feb 7, 2010 -
25 comments
In 2010,
Obama will have a miserable year,
NATO may lose in Afghanistan,
the UK gets a regime change,
China needs to chill,
India's factories will overtake its farms,
Europe risks becoming an irrelevant museum,
the stimulus will need an exit strategy,
the G20 will see a challenge from the "G2",
African football will
unite Korea,
conflict over natural resources will grow,
Sarkozy will be unloved and unrivalled,
the kids will come together to solve the world's problems (because their elders are unable),
technology will grow ever more ubiquitous,
we'll all charge our phones via USB,
MBAs will be uncool,
the Space Shuttle will be put to rest, and
Somalia will be the worst country in the world. And so
the Tens begin.
The Economist: The World in 2010.
[more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane
on Nov 14, 2009 -
60 comments
Every year the Strategy Team at
Saxo Bank, a Danish
virtual bank, publishes a list of ten black swan class market events. Some of the more dramatic possibilities Saxo advance for 2009: crude trading down to $25 a barrel causing severe social unrest in Iran, the S&P 500 falling to 500, Chinese GDP approaching zero and several member states dropping the Euro. The complete
2009 list is here and for completeness their
2008 [ .pdf ] ,
2007 [ .pdf ] and
2006 lists [ .pdf ] are also available.
[more inside]
posted by Mutant
on Jan 7, 2009 -
32 comments
In 2009,
a remarkably gifted politician, confronting a remarkably difficult set of challenges, will
have to learn to say "No we can't",
Guantánamo will prove a moral minefield,
economic recovery will be invisible to the naked eye,
governments must prepare for the day they stop financial guarantees,
we will judge our commitment to sustainability,
scientists should research the causes of religion,
we will all be potential online paparazzi,
English will have more words than any other language (but it's meaningless),
Afghanistan will see a surge of Western (read: American) troops,
Iran will continue its nuclear quest while
diplomacy lies in shambles,
the sea floor is the new frontier,
we should rethink aging,
(non-)voters will continue to thwart the European project --
but cheap travel will continue to buoy it --
though it has some unfinished business to attend to, and
a Nordic defence bond will blossom.
The Economist: The World in 2009.
[more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane
on Nov 27, 2008 -
31 comments
In 1963, General Dynamics Astronautics asked politicians, scientists, and military commanders to speculate on the potential state of the world in 2063, recording all these speculations in a book, and sealing it in a time capsule that was lost during the demolition of the General Dynamics Astronautics building. Thankfully, the entirety of the book is
available as a download thanks to the fine folks at
Paleo-Future. Found
Via.
posted by jonson
on Apr 14, 2008 -
10 comments
The Cabinet Office in the UK has published "Future Strategic Challenges for Britain" [
full pdf,
summary pdf,
website], a 180-page document which summarises current futures thinking in the UK Government, with a horizon of about 20 years. It includes predictions on big issues such as democratic participation, foreign affairs, climate change, family life and public services.
posted by athenian
on Feb 8, 2008 -
6 comments
In 2008,
China will fail to ride the Olympics wave and improve its worldwide image,
the US will vote mainly on
health (barring a terrorist attack or a recession),
usher in a period of pragmatic caution and toast to it
over a nice Merlot, the
culture wars will go global,
Israel may decide that it must act alone against Iran,
African gangs will prosper,
UK politics will be re-established as a spectator sport,
we will finally quit oil - and want yet more of it,
the potato will make a comeback,
an island will be moved for the sake of the Euro,
we will rush to give for free what others charge for,
U will HAV CASH,
robots will explore the seas of Earth,
which is round, by the way,
pigs will fly, and we will
like totally love it (
don't we?).
The Economist: The World in 2008.
[more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane
on Nov 28, 2007 -
33 comments
In the year 1900, Ladies Home Journal writer John Elfreth Watkins Jr wrote an article entitled
What May Happen In The Next 100 Years". This is apparently what the most learned, conservative men of the "greatest institutions of science and learning" had to say about the coming hundred years.
posted by antifuse
on Apr 19, 2007 -
100 comments
Much of the “jobs of the future” rhetoric surrounding the eagerness to end shop class and get every warm body into college, thence into a cubicle, implicitly assumes that we are heading to a “post-industrial” economy in which everyone will deal only in abstractions. Yet trafficking in abstractions is not the same as thinking...
posted by Kwantsar
on Sep 7, 2006 -
54 comments
Noted in the live stream from this TV station This is the "Local2 News" live tv stream (which has been pointed to in three previous MeFi threads about other news stories.
Currently they've from time to time been showing storm track predictive models (which they say are their own development).
I'd rather have pointers to more models than the TV station's occasional glimpses, but, this is the most varied set of storm track predictions I've seen. Anyone know where they're getting them?
posted by hank
on Sep 22, 2005 -
24 comments
What's hot in technogeekery? Match your predictions with Yahoo's ongoing search stats using $10,000 fake dollars as investment capital. Is this how Yahoo is going to steal Google's mindshare - or just another pointless thing to do with
search engines?
posted by Sparx
on Apr 4, 2005 -
6 comments
A better 2004? A mixed look at what Indian and Chinese astrologers see for the new year. We're soon to move into the Chinese
year of the monkey, a
symbol of revolution, movement and changes... a year of more conflict and disharmony in international relationship but there are good chances of seeing new light and brighter future after struggles.
But on the brighter(ish) side,
Stargazers agree that the coming 12 months cannot fare much worse than the seesaw ride that the world went through in 2003, dogged by war in Iraq, fluctuating financial markets and mysterious diseases.
posted by amberglow
on Jan 1, 2004 -
16 comments
Aids in Africa - you know the facts right? Well perhaps not, what you know are the predictions of a Computer Model. Rian Malan in today's Spectator highlights how alarmingly inaccurate such models are proving.
Paul Henman illustrates how common it is to build political assumptions into a model and then hide them under layers of complexity and apparent objectivity. Think
global warming. How do we challenge the models that increasingly determine our opinions and priorities?
posted by grahamwell
on Dec 12, 2003 -
15 comments
